A few days ago I heard about a writing course offered by the University of Iowa. The course is called ‘How Writers Write Fiction 2016: Storied Women’. In reading the course information I could tell it was way above my level of writing. I made a comment about that and received a response saying that I shouldn’t worry, even undergraduates took the course.

Back to school (image from wiki commons)

Talk about a plummet down the steep slope of lack of confidence. Immediately the inner critic jumped into action. Normally I name the inner critic ‘mom’ but I think I need to rename it ‘Super Antagonist’ as it’s my single biggest source of conflict.

I heard these things. Well, there you go; you’re not even an undergraduate. You’re not good enough. You’ll fail. You’ll be seen publicly as not being able to write. You call yourself a writer but you only took one creative writing college course and hated it. 

In my defense we were told to write about a peanut and then failed if it was humorous rather than existential. An existential peanut. Think about that a moment. My peanut was not existential.

On and on and on. Same old familiar tune.

So what did I do? I got smart. I told my husband.

Why is that smart? Because I have learned over the years that he is a master at talking me into things. This is what he said. That he knew me and once I started the course I’d love it. That I was better than I believed. That he knew my author friend Susan Schreyer would be my support and back up during the course. And so on. The kind of pep talk I needed.

I signed up.

I then emailed Susan to tell her my husband talked me into registering because she’d be my support system. And how did she respond?

By telling me that my husband had now manipulated her into signing up. I thought she’d already registered but it turns out she’d been hesitant, too.

He got us both. Two for one pep talk.

And now my Super Antagonist is whispering ‘you can always quit if you have to’. But hey, I’m registered. And so is Susan. So we’re good. Right?

Those steep, slippery slopes. This is An Caisteal in Britain, from wiki commons